HE  MINISTER 
AND  HIS  PEOPLE 


BROOKS 


Hv-I 


7,  a.3.ot> 


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^^  t¥  ilfpolngira/  ^ 


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PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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BV  660.2    .B76   1909 

Brooks,  Phillips,  1835-1893. 

The  minister  and  his  people 


*     JUL  29  1909     *] 
MINISTER  AND   HIS    PEOPLE 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  STUDENTS  OF 
THE  HARVARD  DIVINITY  SCHOOL  IN  1884 


BY 

I 

PHILLIPS   BROOKS 

LATE   BISHOP   OF   MASSACHUSETTS 


NEW  YORK 

Student  Young  Men's  Christian  Association 

124  East  Twenty-eighth  Street 

1909 


The  Claims  and  Opportunities 
of  the   Christian  Ministry 

A    SERIES    OF    PAMPHLETS 
EDITED  BY  JOHN   R.  MOTT 


THE    MINISTER    AND    HIS   PEOPLE 
By  PHILLIPS   BROOKS 


series  of  pamphlets  on  the 

Claims  and  Opportunities  of  the 
Christian  Ministry 


The   Claims    of    the    Ministry   on    Strong 
Men 
By  George  Angier  Gordon 

The  Right  Sort  of  Men  for  the  Ministry 
By  William  Eraser  McDowell 

The   Modern  Interpretation   of  the  Call 
to  the  Ministry 
By  Edward  Increase  Bosworth 

The  Preparation  of  the  Modern  Minister 
By  Walter  William  Moore 

The  Minister  and  His  People 
By  Phillips  Brooks 

The  Minister  and  the  Community 
By  WooDROW  Wilson 

The  Call  of  the  Country  Church 
By  Arthur  Stephen  Hoyt 

The  Weak  Church  and  the  Strong  Man 
By  Edward  Increase  Bosworth 

The  Minister  as  Preacher 

By  Chari  es  Edward  Jefferson 


Letter  from  President  Roosevelt 

On  the  Call  of  the  Nation  for  Able  Men  to 

Lead  the  Forces  of  Christianity 


THE    MINISTER    AND    HIS    PEOPLE 

I  cannot  begin  without  congratulating  those  to 
whom  I  speak  upon  the  work  which  lies  before  them, 
and  assuring  them  of  the  perpetual  richness  and 
growing  life  of  that  profession  in  which  they  are  en- 
gaged. I  cannot  begin  without  assuring  them  that 
everything  that  is  in  the  promise  of  that  profession  is 
more  than  realized  in  the  actual  operation  of  it;  and 
also  of  my  deep  conviction  that  the  time  has  not 
come,  and  will  never  come,  when  the  work  of  the 
Christian  ministry  will  be  obsolete.  I  believe  that 
there  is  every  promise  of  a  larger  work  for  the  Chris- 
tian minister  today  than  has  ever  been  in  the  past. 
Otherwise  I  should  speak  in  despair,  if  I  spoke  at  all. 

And  yet  one  of  the  first  things  that  comes  before 
us,  as  we  think  of  the  work  of  the  theological  student 
and  Christian  minister,  is  the  great  changes  that 
have  come  in  the  nature  of  his  work.  I  am  reminded 
at  once,  as  I  begin,  of  the  largely  prevailing  concep- 
5 


tion  there  is  of  the  difference  which  has  come  in  the 
relations  which  the  Christian  minister  holds  to  his 
people  and  to  the  community.  As  we  look  back  and 
see  the  position  which  he  held  fifty  years  ago,  we  are 
constantly  reminded  of  this  difference.  We  are  told 
a  great  many  anecdotes  of  the  way  he  stood  then,  of 
the  prestige  which  clothed  his  position,  of  the  author- 
ity with  which  it  was  invested.  We  are  then  pointed 
to  the  great  changes  that  have  taken  place,  in  which 
the  minister  has  been  stripped  of  all  that  prestige,  and 
has  no  such  authority  clothing  the  utterances  which 
he  gives  from  the  pulpit. 

There  are  two  ways  of  regarding  that  change,  both 
of  which  I  should  discourage.  One  of  them  is  the 
supposition  that  there  has  come  to  be  a  lamentable 
deficiency,  a  great  falling  away;  that  the  minister 
does  not  occupy  that  position  which  he  once  occu- 
pied. I  remember  a  clergyman  who  was  an  old  man 
just  at  the  time  when  very  many  who  are  now  be- 
coming old  were  very  young — I  remember  hearing 
this  remark  repeated,  which  he  made  to  one  who 
was  just  going  into  the  ministry:  "It  has  been  my 
exceeding  good  fortune  to  have  my  ministry  just  at 
the  best  time.  I  entered  when  it  was  at  its  highest 
6 


degree  of  prestige,  and  had  the  good  fortune  to  leave 
it  just  as  it  lost  its  prestige  and  influence."  It  was 
not  a  very  cordial  word  for  a  young  man  who  was 
entering  it. 

Then  there  is  an  entirely  different  tone  upon  the 
other  side — a  sort  of  congratulation  that  that  earlier 
prestige  has  passed  away,  and  rejoicing  that  man 
can  now  stand  before  his  fellow-man  without  any  of 
the  artificial  discriminations  that  used  to  belong  to 
the  ministry  years  ago. 

It  seems  to  me  that  both  of  these  methods  of  re- 
garding the  change  that  has  taken  place  are  super- 
ficial, and  that  there  is  something  a  great  deal  deeper 
to  be  said  about  them.  We  are  bound,  I  think,  to 
recognize  that  there  is  a  distinct  progress  going  on, 
and  that  the  old  position  has  a  true  relation  to  the 
new  position  in  which  the  minister  stands  today. 
The  old  position  in  which  the  minister  stood,  clothed 
in  a  certain  recognized  authority  which  had  its  vis- 
ible symbols,  seems  to  me  to  have  been  the  crude  an- 
ticipation of  the  position  in  which  the  minister  stands 
today. 

We  may  say  that  the  changes  that  are  going  on  are 
in  general  of  one  great  sort.     Both  Christian  doctrine 

7 


and  Christian  institutions  are  leaving  off  their  arbi- 
trary forms  and  showing  their  essential  conditions. 
Things  manifest  themselves  in  their  arbitrary  forms 
first,  and  afterward  show  themselves  in  their  essential 
conditions. 

Take,  for  instance,  one  of  the  Christian  doctrines, 
and  see  the  change.  There  was  a  time  when  man  was 
supposed  to  be  appointed  to  fixed,  certain,  and  pre- 
cise conditions  in  the  other  world — the  condition  of 
those  who  were  saved  and  the  condition  of  those  who 
were  lost.  It  was  an  arbitrary  condition,  and  one 
difficult  to  anticipate.  It  was  a  distinction  which  one 
found  it  very  difficult  to  apply  to  his  own  life.  I  be- 
lieve today  that  men  are  looking  forward  to  another 
life,  believing  that  moral  issues  are  to  rule  in  that  life 
as  they  rule  here;  that  man's  destiny  is  fixed  there 
according  to  his  nature,  and  not  according  to  any 
arbitrary  judgment  which  it  is  impossible  for  him  to 
anticipate.  The  two  worlds  are  thus  brought  to- 
gether in  healthier  association,  so  that  men  live  to- 
day in  healthier  anticipation  and  with  a  more  impress- 
ive sanction  of  the  other  life  than  they  have  lived 
in  the  past.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  change  we  find 
in  the  Christian  doctrines  is  the  change  from  the 
8 


arbitrary  to  the  essential;  the  change  from  that 
which  rests  upon  the  will  to  that  which  has  its  root 
in  the  very  nature  of  things.  This  fact,  applied  to 
the  position  of  the  Christian  minister,  must  be  the 
keynote,  the  principle  that  solves  and  makes  clear 
the  whole. 

With  that  point  in  view,  I  want  to  speak  of  the  re- 
lation of  the  minister  to  his  people.  I  shall  speak  of 
his  relation  to  the  intelligence  of  his  people,  to  the 
property  of  his  people,  and  to  the  consciences  of  his 
people. 

When  I  say  "his  people,"  I  recognize  that  there  is 
no  such  constraint  upon  the  minister  today  as  there 
has  been  in  times  past;  that  one  of  the  healthier  proc- 
esses of  the  position  which  he  holds  today  is  the 
opening  of  his  influence;  that  he  has  a  right  to  exer- 
cise it  today  in  ways  which  were  not  open  to  him  in 
other  days. 

Let  me  try  at  the  outset  to  give  one  designation  or 
definition  which  shall  apply  to  it  all.  It  seems  to  me 
that  what  we  want  to  say  about  the  relation  of  the 
minister  to  the  people  now  is  that  it  is  vastly  more 
human  and  vastly  less  ecclesiastical  than  in  the  past. 
That  is  one  result  in  which  we  may  rejoice.     There 

9 


are  certain  relations  which  men  hold  in  view  of  their 
common  humanity — relations  between  men  of  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  intellect  and  of  different  stations  in 
life;  and  all  these  are  in  the  very  nature  of  their  hu- 
man life.  Now  I  conceive  the  Christian  Church  to 
be  simply  humanity  struggling  forward  to  the  reali- 
zation of  its  own  ideal.  I  cannot  conceive  it  to  be 
something  distinct  from  humanity.  I  think  of  it, 
when  it  has  come  to  completion,  as  humanity  come 
to  its  completion.  The  Christian  Church  has  suf- 
fered all  its  worst  effects  and  worst  corruptions  from 
separating  itself  from  humanity.  Whenever  the 
Church  has  conceived  of  itself  as  possessing  privi- 
leges which  do  not  potentially  belong  to  the  whole 
human  race,  it  has  immediately  sunk  into  corruption. 
The  true  and  healthy  Church,  separating  everything 
that  is  corrupt  from  its  life — the  true  Church  is  sim- 
ply humanity  beginning  its  work,  and  gradually 
forming  within  itself  a  nucleus  of  that  which  is  ulti- 
mately to  embrace  the  whole  human  race. 

When  I  say  that  the  relation  of  the  preacher  has 
become  more  human,  it  seems  to  me  that  I  say  that 
this  process  is  going  forward,  and  that  the  Christian 
minister  stands  as  a  man  toward  men,  as  a  man  in 

lO 


relation  to  his  fellow-men,  and  not  as  the  creature 
of  some  artificial  organization.  I  wish  I  could  make 
you  bear  that  in  mind  as  I  go  on.  The  relation  be- 
tween the  Christian  minister  and  the  people  who  are 
around  him  is  simply  the  relation  between  a  certain 
man,  put  in  a  peculiar  and  helpful  attitude  to  his  fel- 
low-men. It  is  not  something  organized  by  churches 
and  councils,  but  is  something  rising  from  human 
nature  itself. 

What  relation  then  does  the  minister  hold  with 
regard  to  the  intelligence  of  the  people  around  him? 
It  is  simply  the  attitude  of  one  who,  with  superior 
opportunities,  guides  his  fellow-men  in  their  search 
for  truth. 

The  function  of  the  minister  in  relation  to  the  in- 
telligence of  the  people  is  threefold:  To  awaken  their 
spiritual  activity,  to  give  them  the  results  of  his 
study,  and  to  lift  their  life  to  the  higher  tone  which 
Christianity  assures.     Look  at  each  one  of  these  three. 

First,  he  is  to  awaken  the  spiritual  activity,  the 
insight,  the  real  desire  to  know  with  regard  to  the 
highest  things.  When  we  look  around  upon  our  fel- 
low-men, we  see  that  the  one  thing  that  presses  on  us 
most  is  not  the  extent  of  men's  ignorance:  it  is  their 


indifference.  So  many  men  are  wrapped  up  in  the 
things  of  the  present  life,  that  to  all  the  vast  region 
which  we  know  exists  beyond  they  are  wholly  indif- 
ferent. To  awaken  the  spiritual  sense,  to  make 
them  care  for  unseen  things,  to  make  them  long  for 
some  sort  of  entrance  into  that  great  reality  which 
they  feel  around  them — that  is  the  great  function  of 
the  Christian  minister.  Even  if  he  had  nothing  dis- 
tinctly to  tell  of  certainty  with  regard  to  this  truth, 
the  mere  awakening  of  men  to  search  for  religious 
truth  in  their  own  blind  way  would  be  one  of  the 
noblest  things  he  could  do. 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  a  few  months  ago  analyzed 
Mr.  Emerson;  and  the  result  was  this.  He  said  that 
Mr.  Emerson,  although  he  might  not  be  so  great  in 
some  points  as  some  of  us  thought,  was  great  in  this, 
that  he  was  "the  friend  and  helper  of  those  who 
would  live  in  the  spirit."  That  criticism  by  Mr. 
Arnold  of  Mr.  Emerson  was  very  largely  criticized. 
It  seemed  to  some  that  he  had  degraded  the  philoso- 
pher. It  seemed  to  me  that  this  objection  was  a  mel- 
ancholy criticism  upon  our  standards. 

Is  there  a  nobler  thing  than  when  a  critic  comes 
and  says  of  him  whom  I  reverence  and  honor  that  he 

12 


was  the  friend  and  helper  of  those  who  would  live  in 
the  spirit  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  he  said  something  in- 
finitely greater  than  if  he  had  said  that  he  wrought 
the  noblest  system  of  philosophy  that  has  been 
framed  in  the  world.  The  man  that  is  doing  the 
best  work  for  mankind  today  is  the  guide  and  friend 
of  those  who  live  in  the  spirit. 

Then  we  may  be  able  to  take  one  step  further,  and 
know  that  there  has  been  one  manifestation  of  the 
spiritual  life  in  this  world  that  surpasses  all  other 
manifestations.  Whatever  may  be  our  theological 
conceptions  of  Him,  we  know  that  Jesus  Christ  stands 
as  the  supreme  inspirer  of  the  spiritual  life;  and  he 
who  would  be  today  the  guide  and  friend  of  those 
who  would  live  in  the  spirit  must  of  necessity  turn  to 
Jesus  Christ  and  put  himself  in  relation  to  His  spir- 
itual life.  There  is  where  the  minister  becomes  a 
Christian  minister — in  the  simple  desire,  through 
contact  with  the  life  and  work  and  death  of  Jesus 
Christ,  to  stir  the  soul  and  the  spiritual  life  of  man. 
The  testimony  of  all  ages  is  that  there  has  been  no 
such  spiritual  power  as  Jesus  Christ. 

This  is  the  first  work,  then,  of  the  minister,  to  reach 
the  spiritual  sense  and  to  stir  it  to  activity. 
13 


What  is  the  second  one?  It  is  his  duty  to  know 
something  that  those  to  whom  he  ministers  do  not 
know.  Just  as  the  professor  in  some  department 
devotes  himself  to  its  study  and  gives  to  mankind 
what  he  finds  in  that  department,  so  it  would  be  a 
strange  thing  if  a  minister,  set  apart  to  study  a  special 
work,  had  not  something  to  tell  men  which  they  did 
not  know.  Not  that  this  implies  any  infallibility  in 
the  Christian  minister,  but  simply  the  education  of 
a  consecrated  life  in  the  highest  things  which  engage 
the  intelligence  of  mankind.  The  minister  who  sim- 
ply stands  before  men  and  says,  "You  must  be  spir- 
itual, but  I  can  tell  you  nothing  about  spiritual 
things,"  is  absolutely  false  to  his  function.  What 
may  we  tell  men  in  regard  to  spiritual  things?  We 
may  tell  them  how  the  whole  history  of  mankind  has 
been  permeated  and  filled  with  spiritual  things.  We 
may  show  how  mankind  has  always  done  the  best 
in  intellectual  regions  when  it  has  been  filled  full  of 
spiritual  influence.  We  may  scatter  such  a  foolish 
belief  as  exists  in  men's  minds  today  with  regard  to 
the  possible  extension  of  the  Christian  faith  around 
the  world;  there  are  superficial  objectors  to  mis- 
sions who  are  ready  to  believe,  without  any  just  com- 
14 


parison,  that  there  is  a  religion  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  today  that  can  for  a  moment  compare  with 
the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  all  its  conceptions  or 
forms,  taken  as  one  great  whole.  We  may  show  how 
the  history  of  the  Christian  Church  is  a  necessary 
part  of  the  intelligence  of  humanity  today.  These 
are  but  a  part  of  the  simple  information,  the  mere 
instruction,  which  the  Christian  minister  can  give. 

Then  just  one  thing  more.  It  is  his  place  to 
elevate  the  tone  of  life  everywhere;  to  bring  it  into 
contact  with  those  sublime  principles  which  are  es- 
sential to  humanity,  which  are  struggling  to  the  sur- 
face of  human  life  everywhere,  and  have  come  to 
their  best  manifestations  in  Christianity — patience, 
long-suffering,  large  charity,  and,  above  all  things, 
hopefulness.  The  perpetual  tendency  of  the  world 
to  lose  its  hopefulness  is  one  of  the  things  which  the 
Christian  minister,  by  every  power  in  his  life,  is 
bound  to  resist.  I  can  understand  a  Christian  min- 
ister denying  almost  the  essentials  of  the  Christian 
faith;  I  can  understand  a  minister  teaching  things 
from  a  Christian  pulpit  which  I  feel  to  be  untrue; 
but  I  do  not  see  how  a  man  can  take  the  place  of  a 
Christian  minister  unless  he  is  inspired  by  a  spirit  of 
15 


deep  hopefulness  in  regard  to  the  human  race,  always 
believing  that  man  is  the  child  of  God;  that  his  for- 
tunes are  fastened  to  the  deep  fortunes  of  the  world; 
and,  unless  the  whole  is  rotten — unless  there  is  noth- 
ing which  has  an  assured  future — man,  bound  by 
the  conditions  of  his  life,  being  a  child  of  God,  must 
be  a  creature  of  perpetual  hope. 

Now  when  one  says  to  me  that  I  have  lost  much 
that  the  Christian  minister  in  other  times  used  to 
have;  when  one  says  to  me  that  I  am  not  able  to 
speak  with  the  authority  with  which  a  Christian  min- 
ister used  to  speak,  so  that  my  life  is  gone  and  my 
function  is  useless,  I  turn  to  these  three  things:  It  is 
my  place  to  awaken  and  to  make  active  the  spiritual 
sense  of  men;  to  tell  men  everything  that  I  have  found 
with  regard  to  spiritual  truth,  and  to  make  men  hope 
with  every  possible  assertion  of  their  relation  to  the 
highest  and  divinest  which  it  is  in  my  power  to  make. 

Before  I  leave  this  first  part  of  my  subject,  I  can- 
not help  saying  that,  after  all,  I  myself  feel  that  the 
relation  to  his  people  is  not  the  deepest  relation  which 
a  minister  holds.  Almost  all  the  errors  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry,  almost  all  the  heresies  of  the  Christian 
Church,  if  we  really  retain  that  word  in  its  true  mean- 
i6 


ing,  have  come  from  supposing  that  man's  relation 
to  his  fellow-man  may  be  superior  to  his  loyalty  to  the 
truth.  It  is  the  reversal  of  that  order  again  and  again 
in  Christian  history  that  has  led  to  the  worst  things 
that  have  happened  to  the  Christian  Church. 

There  was  a  time  when  men  believed  that  they 
must  assert  certain  doctrines  which  they  only  half 
held,  because  they  thought  that  if  those  doctrines 
were  not  asserted  men  would  go  to  ruin.  Any  man 
who  rightly  perceives  the  relation  which  mankind 
sustains  to  truth  knows  that  this  is  an  argument 
which  had  no  place  there.  My  business  is  to  seek 
and  find  the  truth,  and  to  leave  it  to  God  to  guard  ^ 
that  it  shall  not  ruin  the  lives  of  men. 

Does  not  the  same  error  appear  also  today  upon 
the  other  side?  When  any  man  today  makes  less 
exacting,  less  earnest  or  imperative,  any  one  of  the 
statements  of  truth  or  divine  justice  and  righteous- 
ness, in  order  that  his  fellow-men  may  be  induced 
to  do  the  less  when  he  thinks  that  they  will  not  be 
induced  to  do  the  greater;  when  any  man  pares  down 
doctrine  or  truth,  in  order  that  men  may  be  induced 
to  believe  that  which  alone  he  thinks  they  are  fitted 
to  believe — then  it  is  sacrificing  the  love  of  truth  for 
17 


the  sake  of  men.  No  man  has  any  right  to  make 
that  which  he  believes  to  be  the  truth  of  God  any 
less  exacting,  less  sharp  or  clear,  because  he  thinks 
his  fellow-men  will  not  accept  it  if  he  states  it  in  its 
blankest  and  baldest  form. 

I  read  an  incident  in  a  newspaper  the  other  day 
that  seems  to  me  to  illustrate  this  point.  A  tired  and 
dusty  traveller  was  leaning  against  a  lamp-post  in 
the  city  of  Rochester,  and  he  turned  and  looked 
around  him  and  said,  "How  far  is  it  to  Farming- 
ton?"  and  a  boy  in  the  crowd  said,  "Eight  miles." 
"Do  you  think  it  is  so  far  as  that?"  said  the  poor 
tired  traveller.  "Well,  seeing  that  you  are  so  tired, 
I  will  call  it  seven  miles."  The  boy,  with  his  heart 
overflowing  with  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  pitied 
the  exhausted  traveller,  and  chose  to  call  it  seven 
miles.  I  know  I  have  seen  statements  of  the  truth 
that  have  been  dictated  by  the  same  motive.  Never 
make  the  road  from  Rochester  to  Farmington  seven 
miles,  when  you  know  it  is  eight.  Do  not  do  a 
wrong  to  truth  out  of  regard  for  men. 

There  is  another  point,  if  one  may  speak  out  of 
his  own  ministry  and  from  observation  of  the  minis- 
try of  others:  men  do  not  dread  to  believe,  men  long 
i8 


to  believe.  The  one  thing  that  we  do  not  have  to  do 
is  to  pare  down  the  truth  for  man's  capacity  to  be- 
lieve. Give  them  all  the  truth;  you  cannot  make  it 
too  exacting.  The  whole  of  Christian  history  has 
been  full  of  testimony  that  you  may  claim  your  fel- 
low-men by  virtue  of  the  very  imperiousness  and 
absoluteness  of  that  which  they  have  been  called  upon 
to  believe.  The  old  credo  quia  impossihile  of  Ter- 
tullian  had  philosophy  in  it.  Men  long  to  believe; 
and,  while  ultimately  every  healthy  human  faculty 
will  reject  that  which  is  not  congenial  to  it,  you  can- 
not help  men  better  than  by  laying  before  them  all 
that  which  is  true,  even  in  its  blankest  and  most- 
uncompromising  form.  Just  as  there  are  many  men 
whom  you  cannot  get  to  go  down  the  street  for  you, 
but  who  would  go  half  the  way  around  the  world  for 
you  if  you  needed  it,  so  there  are  men  who  would 
not  accept  the  truth  which  they  felt  had  been  pared 
down  for  them;  but,  when  you  put  before  them  God 
in  His  eternity  and  infinitude  and  the  soul  in  its  vast- 
ness  and  mystery,  then  the  power  of  belief,  stirred 
to  its  greatest  task,  lifts  itself  up  and  does  its  work. 

I  pass  now  to  something  subordinate  and  inferior 
to  the  point  in  regard  to  the  intelligence  of  men — 
19 


the  relation  of  the  Christian  minister  to  the  property 
of  those  to  whom  he  ministers.  Many  seem  to  think 
that  he  has  the  property  of  a  large  part  of  the  com- 
munity at  his  disposal;  certainly  of  all  that  part  of  the 
community  that  is  associated  with  him.  If  I  were 
to  do  half  the  things  with  other  people's  money  that 
I  am  asked  to  do  every  year,  I  should  impoverish 
the  city  of  Boston. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  minister  is  simply  called 
upon  to  count  his  people  as  stewards  of  the  Highest; 
not  to  be  the  distributor  or  almoner  of  other  people's 
goods,  but  to  make  other  men  such,  by  the  spiritual 
things  which  I  have  been  trying  to  describe,  that  they 
shall  enter  into  the  privilege  of  putting  that  which 
has  been  intrusted  to  them  to  the  highest  use  to  which 
it  can  be  employed.  No  man  deals  properly  with 
a  man  until  he  accounts  him  more  than  his  property. 
"I  seek  not  yours,  but  you,"  said  Paul.  The  spir- 
itual life,  the  good  of  men,  the  good  of  the  soul — that 
is  the  thing  that  the  Christian  minister  is  to  seek. 

Give  yourself  with  your  gift.     Something  is  gained 

if  you  get  a  man's  five  hundred  dollars  here  and 

there;  but  it  is  not  the  work  of  a  Christian  minister. 

Let  other  people  go  and  beg  for  money  without  the 

20 


slightest  regard  of  the  way  in  which  it  is  bestowed; 
but  it  is  for  the  Christian  minister  to  make  a  man 
know  himself  capable  of  consecration,  and  then  to 
make  him  consecrate  himself,  which  must  include 
the  property  which  he  possesses.  This,  it  seems  to 
me,  is  the  only  definition  which  we  can  give  of  the 
relation  of  the  Christian  minister  to  the  property  of 
those  to  whom  he  ministers.  He  must  work  through 
the  characters  and  natures  of  his  people.  Again  and 
again  a  man  has  lost  the  power  to  do  that  work  by 
the  way  in  which  he  has  been  appealing  to  the  indi- 
vidual. I  will  stand  before  my  congregation  and  tell 
them  of  the  glory  of  charity.  I  will  tell  them  what  a 
grand  thing  it  is  to  give  for  God,  then  let  them  do 
the  good  for  themselves,  and  go  forth  and  give  of 
their  means;  but  I  will  not  go  to  a  man  in  any  way 
that  can  possibly  involve  my  personality,  knowing 
that  he  will  give  out  of  friendship  to  me,  and  extort 
one  dollar  or  five  hundred  from  him  for  the  best  of 
objects. 

And  here,  it  seems  to  me,  comes  in  one  great  func- 
tion of  the  Christian  minister  that  I  hope  all  of  you 
will  not  forget;  which  is  that  you  must  have  such  a 
large  interest  in  great    human  necessities   that  you 


should  be  able  to  inform  those  that  are  able  to  give 
how  to  bestow  their  goods.  The  Christian  minister 
has  no  right  to  shut  himself  up  in  ecclesiastical  in- 
terests. He  is  bound  to  consider  everything  that  re- 
lates to  humanity,  and  to  consider  that  a  dollar  that  is 
given  to  the  sufferers  in  Louisville  is  as  consecrated 
a  dollar  as  that  which  is  given  for  an  altar  or  a  font. 
The  minister  stands  in  a  position  in  which  he  can 
bring  information  to  men  that  they  might  noi  have 
otherwise.  To  bring  that  information  by  the  pow- 
ers which  he  can  wield  over  the  spiritual  life,  and  to 
make  men  feel  called  to  give  just  as  soon  as  they  see 
that  they  should  give — that  is  all,  it  seems  to  me,  that 
the  Christian  minister  has  to  do  with  the  property  of 
the  community. 

And,  if  one  can  again  bear  testimony  out  of  his 
own  experience,  I  can  say  that  there  is  a  wonderful 
readiness  to  give.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  one  great 
thing  that  we  lack  is  sufficient  information  in  regard 
to  the  things  to  which  money  can  be  devoted.  The 
advocate  of  every  great  cause  is  apt  to  be  dishonest — 
unconsciously  dishonest — and  to  represent  his  cause 
as  greater  in  proportion  than  others  around  it.  That 
is  the  way  in  which  the  minister  can  stand  between 

22 


his  people  and  such  advocates,  and  show  them  the 
comparative  importance  of  objects  brought  before 
them. 

And  now  I  pass  to  consider  the  relation  of  the 
Christian  minister  to  the  conscience  of  the  commu- 
nity. The  conscience  of  the  community  is  nothing 
but  the  aggregate  conscience  of  individuals.  When 
we  speak  of  that,  we  open  a  large  and  sometimes 
dark  page  of  human  history.  We  talk  of  the  abuses 
of  the  priesthood  in  other  times.  I  think  we  have 
no  idea  of  the  clamor  which  was  made  then  upon  the 
priests  to  guide  other  people's  consciences.  The 
Christian  minister  is  not  so  much  bound  to  refrain 
from  asserting  a  claim  upon  the  consciences  of  men 
as  he  is  bound  not  to  allow  himself  to  be  the  master 
of  their  consciences.  It  is  one  of  the  embarrass- 
ments of  the  intelligent,  spiritual  minister  that  peo- 
ple are  so  ready  to  put  their  consciences  under  the 
control  of  others.  I  am  sure  if  we  could  go  back 
into  the  ages  which  we  abuse  most,  the  time  when  the 
priesthood  set  themselves  over  the  consciences  of 
men,  we  should  find  that  the  real  trouble  came  from 
men  and  women  who  were  seeking  to  be  thus  guided. 
It  is  the  education  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people  so 

23 


that  they  have  felt  themselves  called  upon  to  accept 
the  great  responsibility  of  the  guidance  of  their  own 
consciences  that  has  released  the  clergy,  rather  than 
the  disposition  of  the  clergy  themselves. 

Just  as  soon  as  we  talk  of  the  relation  of  the  Church 
to  the  consciences  of  mankind,  I  suppose  we  are 
called  upon  to  make  that  division  which  must  always 
be  made  when  we  talk  about  sinfulness.  There  are 
two  classes  of  wrong-doing,  two  classes  of  sin.  One 
comprises  those  sins  which  have  no  intrinsic  good, 
which  are  always  wrong  whenever  they  are  done; 
the  other  comprises  those  things  which  are  harmful 
to  the  individual  soul  or  are  harmful  to  other  people, 
and  are  therefore  not  right  to  be  done.  There  are 
certain  things  that  no  man,  under  any  circumstances 
or  in  any  age,  should  ever  consider  right  to  be  done. 
There  are  some  things  of  which,  if  a  man  should  ask 
me  why  I  do  not  do  them,  I  should  say,  "They  are 
absolutely  wrong."  Of  other  things  I  should  say, 
"I  know,  if  I  did  them,  I  should  be  a  less  upright, 
less  holy  man;  and  I  know  that  I  have  no  right  to 
do  them."  "Do  you  pronounce  them  to  be  abso- 
lutely wrong?"  "No."  Some  things  are  wrong  in 
the  eighteenth  century  which  are  not  wrong  in  the 
24 


nineteenth.  Complications  of  certain  conditions  may 
be  harmful  to  the  spiritual  life — I  mean,  the  best  life 
of  man.  I  do  not  use  these  words  in  an  ofl&cial 
sense.  There  are  such  things  as  the  spiritual  life  of 
man  and  the  consecration  of  the  man's  powers  to 
spiritual  things;  and  when  anything  becomes  harm- 
ful to  them,  no  man  living  has  a  right  to  do  it. 

Now  let  us  consider  what  the  Church  and  the  min- 
ister have  to  do  in  regard  to  these  sins.  In  the  first 
place  there  are  some  things  which,  as  already  said, 
are  absolutely  wrong.  Slavery,  for  instance,  is  ab- 
solutely wrong;  it  is  to  be  rooted  out.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  the  minister  comes  to  deal  with  a  sin 
which  has  an  individual  and  personal  character, 
there  can  be  no  such  absolute  statement,  and  the  one 
great,  sublime  function  of  the  Christian  minister  is 
the  awakening  of  the  individual  conscience  to  exam- 
ine its  own  obligations,  to  recognize  its  own  sins.  I 
think  it  is  not  good  that  any  man  should  accept  a 
duty  simply  or  solely  upon  the  word  of  another  man. 
Duty  is  something  never  done,  unless  it  is  done  out  of 
a  man's  own  conscience.  For  me  to  go  to  the  slave- 
holder and  say,  "It  is  wrong  to  hold  any  man  in 
bondage,"  and  to  have  him  answer,  "I  cannot  think 
25 


so;  but,  since  you  think  so,  I  will  let  them  go  free" 
— how  absolutely  unsatisfactory  that  is!  There  are 
always  such  things  in  the  life  of  the  minister  when 
he  feels  that  a  man's  own  conscience  has  not  come 
to  have  the  fullest  light  and  to  work  in  the  most  legit- 
imate and  healthful  way.  The  danger  of  the  min- 
ister and  the  Church  is  that  they  should  be  satisfied 
with  something  or  other  short  of  the  absolute  per- 
suasion of  the  man's  own  conscience. 

With  regard  to  those  other  sins  that  have  grown 
out  of  the  special  complications  of  life,  the  work  is 
not  so  clear.  It  is  not  so  satisfactorily  recognizable, 
but  it  is  just  as  truly  the  work  of  the  minister.  Let 
me  persuade  the  conscience  of  my  fellow-man  so 
that  it  works  truly,  so  that  he  has  really  tried  to  do 
right,  and  I  have  done  my  total  duty  for  that  man. 
And  when  he  comes  to  a  different  judgment  from 
me,  although  I  cannot  see  how  he  can  do  it,  yet  as  a 
minister  I  may  rest  absolutely  satisfied  with  the  true, 
independent  judgment  of  his  own  life. 

Now  is  there  not  left  here  a  function  for  the  minis- 
ter? If  our  Christian  Church,  as  a  whole,  could  do 
that  for  our  community  and  nation  today;  could  call 
upon  it  and  persuade  it  to  cast  away  those  sins  which 
26 


are  absolutely  and  certainly  wrong,  and,  with  regard 
to  all  doubtful  questions,  to  enter  into  a  searching 
examination  of  them  all  and  to  act  according  to  its 
best  light,  then  the  Christian  minister  would  have 
regenerated  our  land.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
Christian  minister  has  a  right  to  abdicate  his  func- 
tion as  the  director  of  the  human  conscience;  but  it 
is  important  that  he  shall  know  that  it  is  a  living 
thing,  and  shall  direct  it  as  a  living  thing,  just  as 
you  put  every  power  of  growth  into  a  tree,  and  then 
let  it  grow  according  to  its  nature,  so  with  the  con- 
science: we  shall  not  bend  it  according  to  our  con- 
ceptions of  the  right,  we  shall  simply  inspire  it  with 
a  passion  of  righteousness,  and  then  let  it  develop  in 
its  own  true  way.  Here  is  a  relation  to  the  conscience 
which  is  quite  enough  to  occupy  your  thoughts,  your 
earnest  anxiety,  and  your  time,  so  long  as  you  are 
ministers. 

Then  come  back  to  that  which  I  said  at  the  very 
beginning,  that  the  Cjiristian  Church,  however  we 
may  talk  of  it  distinctively,  is  nothing  in  the  world 
except  the  first  sketch  of  completed  humanity.  The 
Christian  Church  has  nothing  which  is  essential  to 
its  belief  that  all  men  ought  not  to  be  believing;  it 
27 


has  no  duties  resting  upon  its  members  that  all  men 
ought  not  to  be  doing.  Then  I  think  we  can  see  its 
relations  truly  to  the  community  around  us. 

The  majority  of  men  do  not  today  belong  in  asso- 
ciated relations  to  the  Christian  Church.  What  does 
that  mean?  First,  that  the  Christian  Church  has 
not  made  itself  broad  enough  to  make  earnest  and 
true  men  recognize  the  ideal  of  their  humanity  in  it; 
that  it  has  been  too  special,  too  fantastic.  Secondly, 
that  it  has  a  great  work  before  it  so  to  declare  its  hu- 
man application  that  it  shall  commend  itself  to  every 
man  who  really  is  in  earnest  in  his  thought  and  earnest 
in  his  deed.  The  Church  seems  to  me  to  have 
that  great  function  before  it,  and  never  to  have 
had  the  possibility  for  the  fulfilment  of  that  duty  so 
large  and  open  before  it  in  all  the  ages  of  its  exist- 
ence as  today.  Therefore  I  would  rather  be  a  Chris- 
tian minister  than  anything  else;  and  I  welcome  with 
all  my  heart  those  of  you  who  are  preparing  for  that 
good  work. 


2$ 


